Dear Greta – I don’t like Donald.

You’re not a parliamentary Speaker, are you? Good, just checking. Because John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, is experiencing all sorts of pain for voicing the same opinion.

Traditionally, our Speaker is politically neutral – in contrast to the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, who is partisan. So it’s slightly amusing that in ‘denouncing’ a US president, Bercow became ‘a little bit Yank.’

Or did he?

He actually said: ‘as far as this place is concerned I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and to sexism and our support for equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations in the House of Commons.’

Which is the same as saying ‘I think you guys should consider these issues.’ Which isn’t really being politically partisan, even if he did go a little bit red in the face and get quite shouty.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with Bercow voicing an opinion for consideration. He’s meant to act in a politically neutral way, not be devoid of thought. And he’s certainly not meant not to flag pertinent issues. As one of the guardians of our parliamentary system, I expect he felt compelled to dryly point to the charging Trump herd of wildebeest on the planes of parliamentary democracy, which seems fair enough to me.

So, what do I think of Trump?

Well, each time in history throws up a leader of the times. You can’t dislike Donald for being elected; instead note with interest that We The People wanted him. Trump is a man of his time.

The US has left the era of ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’. It is now in the era of ‘grab them by the pussy.’

JFK observed that ‘change is the law of life’. The US has changed many times – the country that needed Lincoln to lead is not the same country that needed Clinton, or Obama.

So, it’s not that I don’t like Trump; the man is almost irrelevant. It’s that I deeply mourn the times he represents.